Vignettes from the Field
Snapshot
Mary |
Student |
Discipline |
Social Work |
Enrolment status |
Full time, on campus |
Year |
2 nd Year, post graduate |
Experience |
Positive |
‘It's so fantastically good that the audio files are there’ I just did an intensive course a month ago and I missed a day due to a car accident- that's 30% of the course.’ Mary
Mary’s story
Mary is currently in the second year of a post-graduate Social Work degree. She studies full-time although there’s a requirement for a field placement during her course.
She lives 45 minutes drive from University (should we use the full word in case of International NESB audience?) but almost always attends on-campus lectures. She finds live lectures motivating and enjoys communicating with the lecturer and other students.
WBLT and learning
‘As far as I'm concerned, so much of the lecture actually comes from verbal content that’s an addition to any kind of written material you're given. So basically you’re stuffed if you miss too much lecture content.’
Mary considers the content of lectures to be very important for her learning and mainly uses WBLT as a back-up when she can’t attend class. Some of her courses are structured to include an ‘intensive’ block of classes, conducted ‘9-5 for a week to get the content out of the way.’ She recently had a car accident during one of these scheduled ‘intensives and found WBLT invaluable:
‘I wasn't able to go on one of the days so I missed 30%, 8 hours worth of lecture time which is a massive chunk. I haven't actually listened to it yet but I am able to access that information’.
She also uses WBLT as a study tool to review complex materials, pick up on things missed in class and to revise for exams.
Impressions of using WBLT
Mary has had generally positive experiences with WBLT during her studies and recalls earlier degrees when no such back-up was available:
‘It's a really great idea having audio files available for download, so if for some reason we can't get to a lecture we can actually access them later.
One limitation she recognises is the time required to download on slow connections:
‘I've got dialup at home and it can be very slow to download some of them. Some of them you can stream but some of them you do actually have to download. For me it would take a good hour minimum to be able to download an hour-long audio file.’
Learning futures
Mary anticipates that technology will provide additional support for students in the future:
‘I think it's becoming more difficult to be a uni student in terms of the cost and the contact hours. If technology can be used in a way that supports independent learning- for example online lectures then... I think that's absolutely vital that they're available and I think it's brilliant that they're there. I have friends that would not have passed their degrees without them. Because they couldn't attend lectures, they would not have been able to pass their degrees had they not been able to get access to audio files online.’
 |
 |
 |
 |